**Official** Asrock Z68 Gen3 Extreme7 & Extreme4 thread

[Ket]

Right, something has happened here as my other post vanished and humeyboy has been banned so hopefully normal service can now be resumed I'll ask a mod to run cleanup over the last few pages.

[BDM123]

Thank you admin & Ket. That garbage was unnecessary :-(

[LoneWolf]

Right, something has happened here as my other post vanished and humeyboy has been banned so hopefully normal service can now be resumed I'll ask a mod to run cleanup over the last few pages.

Thank you. I had put him on my ignore list, but it's nice to see that it's no longer an issue.

I have only one option left that I can think of in troubleshooting my two issues. Does anyone know if there is a "Legacy" setting for the UEFI BIOS? I'm not home right now, but I plan to check this in case it could resolve either of my issues. I know that my ThinkPad can run in UEFI, Legacy, or a combination mode.

You have to do the registry hack. Because you installed the os with no raid to begin with. Try this and see what you get.

Good advice. It also tempts me a little to get an Intel 311 SSD and see how Intel RST performs.

[rombat]

Guys I would like to know if someone here had hans on the Z68 Extreme 7 Gen 3 ?
I'm waiting for this one to get my hans on..Looking for the upgrade

Hey Arise just join the forum and first time to post, I just got my extreme 7 last friday and been using it for 5 days, all I can say is I am impress with the Asrock Extreme7 gen3 board I am usually an Asus motherboard user but seeing the Extreme7 I was hooked! The system has been great so far (knock on wood)! The only problem I had was when I first turn it on, it would just hang and no display! I prayed to the tech gods and cleared the cmos and it came to life! So thumbs up for Asrock for making an awesome board!

Here is my setup:

Intel i7 2600k overclocked to 4.4 GHz
G.SKILL Sniper Low Voltage Series 8GB MHz
Corsair H100 cpu cooler
Corsair H1000 power supply
Ht Omega eclaro sound card
2 Gigabyte GTX 580 sli
Asrock Extreme7 Gen3
Western Digital velociraptor 150g raid 0 (OS)
Western Digital velociraptor 300g raid 0 (games)
2 LiteOn Blu Ray DVD Burner
In Win Dragon Rider Case
Win7 Ultimate 64bit

[KILLER_K]

Well me and asrock have been exchanging emails for a little over a week. They pretty much told me to send it back tot he place i bought it from. Even when i asked them to rma, swap it or basically do whatever needed to be done. Even the tech support is very bad, they was so bad, what the even told me wasn't even what i was trying to get help for. They even went as far as to try to tell me to download a the usb 3.0 beta driver to fix my keyboard.

First off, my keyboard isn't even on a usb 3.0. Which i tried to explain for 5 emails. But made no difference what-so-ever. I'm almost thinking it was just some random person answering emails now. I am very disappointed in asrock's help and tech support. I could have just gotten a bad board. As i seen on newegg it seems to be a common issue with asrock. Seems their quality control is very low for some odd reason.

I guess my main issue is what do you have to do to even get these people to even half way try to help out. It is almost like they don't care when they answer a email asking for tech support. Or even trying to give them info to use to perhaps put in a update for the uefi. I mean maybe i am old and just set in my ways. You know how us old men are about stuff sometimes.

Again if your asrock board is working then i'm 100% happy for you. Seems i just got the short end of the stick. And it seems like i will not be going back with asrock for the second adventure. Don't get me wrong, i know every manufacture has its good points and bad points. I just wished they would act like they wan to support their product. The board could have been rushed to meet the time frame. I honestly don't know. I hate i got a bad taste with this board and their tech didn't help any for the matter.

Good luck with your Asrock Motherboards and i wish you the best of luck. Me on the other hand will put this up as a total failure on my part. Thanks

[AAbenson]

Hey Arise just join the forum and first time to post, I just got my extreme 7 last friday and been using it for 5 days, all I can say is I am impress with the Asrock Extreme7 gen3 board I am usually an Asus motherboard user but seeing the Extreme7 I was hooked! The system has been great so far (knock on wood)! The only problem I had was when I first turn it on, it would just hang and no display! I prayed to the tech gods and cleared the cmos and it came to life! So thumbs up for Asrock for making an awesome board!

Here is my setup:

Intel i7 2600k overclocked to 4.4 GHz
G.SKILL Sniper Low Voltage Series 8GB MHz
Corsair H100 cpu cooler
Corsair H1000 power supply
Ht Omega eclaro sound card
2 Gigabyte GTX 580 sli
Asrock Extreme7 Gen3
Western Digital velociraptor 150g raid 0 (OS)
Western Digital velociraptor 300g raid 0 (games)
2 LiteOn Blu Ray DVD Burner
In Win Dragon Rider Case
Win7 Ultimate 64bit

Rombat can you plz post bios pictures,what voltage do you need at 4.4ghz?

[LoneWolf]

Well me and asrock have been exchanging emails for a little over a week. They pretty much told me to send it back tot he place i bought it from. Even when i asked them to rma, swap it or basically do whatever needed to be done. Even the tech support is very bad, they was so bad, what the even told me wasn't even what i was trying to get help for. They even went as far as to try to tell me to download a the usb 3.0 beta driver to fix my keyboard.

First off, my keyboard isn't even on a usb 3.0. Which i tried to explain for 5 emails. But made no difference what-so-ever. I'm almost thinking it was just some random person answering emails now. I am very disappointed in asrock's help and tech support. I could have just gotten a bad board. As i seen on newegg it seems to be a common issue with asrock. Seems their quality control is very low for some odd reason.

I guess my main issue is what do you have to do to even get these people to even half way try to help out. It is almost like they don't care when they answer a email asking for tech support. Or even trying to give them info to use to perhaps put in a update for the uefi. I mean maybe i am old and just set in my ways. You know how us old men are about stuff sometimes.

Again if your asrock board is working then i'm 100% happy for you. Seems i just got the short end of the stick. And it seems like i will not be going back with asrock for the second adventure. Don't get me wrong, i know every manufacture has its good points and bad points. I just wished they would act like they wan to support their product. The board could have been rushed to meet the time frame. I honestly don't know. I hate i got a bad taste with this board and their tech didn't help any for the matter.

Good luck with your Asrock Motherboards and i wish you the best of luck. Me on the other hand will put this up as a total failure on my part. Thanks

If that is the experience you had, then I'm truly sorry, dude. I've only just opened a ticket with Asrock regarding my questions on my TV tuner and the floppy drive; I hope I won't have an experience like that; I don't know what response I'll get yet.

You have a right to expect better than that. Personally, I'd look up the CEO's e-mail address and send him a polite, detailed letter stating what you've had to go through and your frustrations. This isn't something I'd like to hear.

Do you have an earlier post in this thread that details your issues? If you still have the board, I'm sure everyone here would like to help. Otherwise, good luck to you on whichever board choice you make.

[KILLER_K]

Yes, I posted my issues i had with the board.
1) Major input/output issues with my logitech g19 keyboard.
2) With my 580, i couldn't overclock past 4.6Ghz.
3) With my 470 i couldn't go past 4.6Ghz.
4) Just random popups saying my pc didn't start.
5) Board will power up and then power down.

Borrowed a asrock fatality p68 board. Haven't had any issues with that board. So i'm just not happy with extreme4 gen3 board at all. I know someone will say, "You get what you pay for" remark. And i guess i did try to save a little money and it seems to have turned around and blew up in my face. Live and learn.

I honestly doubt the CEO would even bother to care. Since i'm not a reviewer or someone highly known. My chances are slim to none. My luck has to change sooner or later.......Thanks

[AzertyNL]

@icedtea, thanks for checking the "memory channel 0/1 rank max" temperatures in hwinfo. I'll ignore them for now (seen as high as 101C by now).

I'm happy with my extreme4 gen3. Running the MB with a 2500K, mugen 3, 2x 4GB 1600 CL9 1.65V kingston ram and sapphire 6950 dirt3 edition.

To provide some overclock info:

Initially I ran on the integrated graphics without the sapphire plugged in. System ran stable on 44x with default voltages (spread spectrum disabled, watt & amperage limits lifted). Temps (ambient is 25C) went up to 63/71/71/70 while running LinX/AVX (nothing competes with it for max. heat generation).
For 45x I needed to switch to offset +0.015 and llc level 4 (Vcc becomes 1.328V), temps rose to the max. of what I wanted 70/79/79/77. 46x did not run completely stable (occasional errors in prime and LinX).

After having plugged in the HD6950 nothing changed on 44x and 45x stability, *but* I discovered that running furmark at the same time as LinX/AVX revealed the system to be unstable, I had to go down to 42x to keep LinX from failing on errors. I have no idea if this is normal but I do not see how/why the video card should affect cpu overclocking. CPU temperatures have gone up due to the heat produced by the video card but on 42x (and 43x) they were still lower than they were on 45x without the card plugged in. (comments/tips are welcomed)

[LoneWolf]

Yes, I posted my issues i had with the board.
1) Major input/output issues with my logitech g19 keyboard.
2) With my 580, i couldn't overclock past 4.6Ghz.
3) With my 470 i couldn't go past 4.6Ghz.
4) Just random popups saying my pc didn't start.
5) Board will power up and then power down.

Borrowed a asrock fatality p68 board. Haven't had any issues with that board. So i'm just not happy with extreme4 gen3 board at all. I know someone will say, "You get what you pay for" remark. And i guess i did try to save a little money and it seems to have turned around and blew up in my face. Live and learn.

I honestly doubt the CEO would even bother to care. Since i'm not a reviewer or someone highly known. My chances are slim to none. My luck has to change sooner or later.......Thanks

Considering the Z68 Extreme 4 Gen 3 mainboard is a $190-200 mainboard "you get what you pay for" should mean "you got a good board". That's not cheap, it's smack in the upper-middle range of boards as prices go.

CEOs often do bother to care if a support experience is bad --it reflects on their company. One well-known fact in any retail industry is that someone with a good experience may tell five people about it; someone with a bad experience will tell twenty. That amounts to lost sales. I have known people who had support issues with a company (e.g., Dell), mailed the CEO, and had their response dramatically improve, even though they were "just another customer".

Their CEO's name is Xu Longlun. I would start there.

http://www.f-paper.com/?i358086-Phot...Longlun-ASRock

P.S. What power supply are you using? I tried to see if I could find that in the thread and didn't come up with it.

[LoneWolf]

To add to this thread --here is the answer to my support ticket regarding my floppy controller and Hauppauge card, from Eric at Asrock.

Hi,

Sorry about the issue you are having. I have to believe you have hardware issue from mainboard. Please contact seller for replacement. Thank you for your time.

I'm a little disappointed with that. I didn't get asked a single question (I provided as much information as I can), not even any preliminary troubleshooting. Based on my experiences with the board so far, I doubt the board is defective.

What concerns me more is "return it to your reseller for replacement". If I bought a board from Gigabyte and had an issue, or (insert one of the other corporations here), I'd be given an RMA-directly-to-the-company option. Does this mean that after the NewEgg 30-day return policy, my two year warranty becomes useless? It's as if Asrock expects their resellers to RMA and will not handle any part of it themselves.

Today is the thirtieth day I have owned this mainboard, and the last day I can return it to NewEgg. If I return it today, I can't risk the lack of customer service sticking me with a $200 purchase, which means I will purchase a board from another vendor. I like this board, and would be disappointed to do this, but it may be the only option I have.

This is going to be a tough decision. I seriously think there is nothing physically wrong with the mainboard, and that returning it will get me another with the same issue. I'm just worried about the level of support I'm going to get. I understand where Killer_K is completely at this point.

[KILLER_K]

It seems honestly that is the answer you get to anything you ask them. Which is just plain odd in my book. Seems mine is fixing to go back to newegg also. And i will just add some cash and get something i can count on for support or at least care about a issue i have.

Edit: I did email them to see if they would give me a email to "Xu Longlun." But i think they will not do anything and i'm tired of sending emails and getting the "Please contact seller for replacement."

This is my power supply information.

Enermax EVO Galaxy 1250 watt 80+ bronze power supply

[LoneWolf]

Sad thing is, there is no mainboard that does it exactly how I want it other than this Asrock. Almost everyone else is missing something, or has a lot of stuff I don't need, or has some support/hardware issues of its own.

The ASUS P8Z68-V PRO is receiving complaints from a number of users about two of the four memory sockets not working, or other odd hardware quirks, and for those having problems, they are also complaining of support issues similar to that of Asrock. The Maximus IV Extreme-G is much more expensive and offers a few features I really don't need (dual NICs, the NF200 chip).

That leaves MSI and Gigabyte. Gigabyte comes closest to what I'd want with the GA-Z68XP-UD5, but lacks the UEFI BIOS and doesn't have the nice Intel or Broadcom NIC, and costs $50-60 more than the Asrock.

In other notes, I've found that my floppy drive works fine when I'm not in Windows. I also found what appears to be a BIOS bug related to it. My Dell 2407WFP LCD has a built in multi-memory card reader that attaches via USB port. When this is plugged in, the UEFI BIOS sees two of the card reader slots as floppy drives, leaving no option for the internal 34-pin floppy drive. I'm guessing it wasn't caught because so few people have both a floppy drive and a card reader attached at the same time. Even when I have the card reader detached though, the floppy drive is not seen in Windows, even though I can boot from it, and even though the Standard Floppy Controller is detected and installed in Device Manager.

I am convinced there is nothing physically wrong with my board (if anything, there may be a BIOS bug or two, but that's it) and that exchanging the board won't solve anything. I just want Asrock to work with me a little here and actually provide support rather than a blanket "It's bad, return it". That's gotta be bad for business if the answer to everything is to send it back rather than try and resolve things, and it results in learning nothing from users' issues to improve support.

[KILLER_K]

This pretty much put the icing on the cake.

To: Support
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 10:57 AM
Subject: Re: Z68 Extreme4 Gen3, Got issues with this board.

Hi,
I need "Xu Longlun's" email to contact him. As it seems he is the one i need to talk to. Thanks

Dear KILLER_K;
We are sorry but we do not have any person with the name you described.

ASRock America Support

[LoneWolf]

This pretty much put the icing on the cake.

Send them the link I sent you as a reply --ask if they really know who their CEO/COO is.

I would. (dry chuckle)

[icedtea]

This pretty much put the icing on the cake.

You may need to get in touch with ASRock in Taiwan as the America support team doesnt seem to know who their CEO is . Also you could try the Sales And Marketing Contact (not for technical support though).

[icedtea]

I've done some more testing only to be more confused as the problems with my X-Fi and floppy have gone away, I've temporarily removed part of my post.


And sorry to hear about the problems some members are facing, also about the sub-par support.
I've tried to replicate some of the problems that have been reported.
1)I could boot into windows at 48x with my HD6950 (rechecked, but didnt look for a LinX/AVX stable voltage setting). iirc KILLER_K reported had he used automatic overclocking it could go to 4.8GHz, dont know what to say about this.

4)overclocking @ 4.5GHz with LinX/AVX and furmark wasnt a problem. With LinX using up most of the CPU time furmark was running slow. VCore reading in HWiNFO was 1.280-1.296, LLC is level 3.
http://i53.tinypic.com/2mmg39g.jpg

Support; at least from the USA team; does seem disappointing which is sad since ASRock makes some fine mobos and as LoneWolf stated it wouldnt be good for their business (though that kind of support is not uncommon from the distributors in my country; part of the problem being it hard for us to explain troubles precisely in english while there are few japanese speaking engineers that we can get in touch directly. I've recieved the same kind of non-helpful support from a well known sound card company but they have a bad rep so... )

It would helpful if we could get in touch with an ASRock engineer or an employee who could get directly in touch with their engineers, maybe Ket could help us out?

[LoneWolf]

It would helpful if we could get in touch with an ASRock engineer or an employee who could get directly in touch with their engineers, maybe Ket could help us out?

I have already PM-ed him on that, and am attempting to get ahold of the head of the Vortez website that reviews the board.

I got some additional messages from Asrock tonight. They told me they couldn't help me with my Hauppauge card issue as they didn't have one of the cards. However, they failed to even address my floppy drive issue despite several e-mails. I'm ashamed to say my last e-mail to them asked about the floppy drive issue in 36-point bold font.

I truly believe this is a great motherboard in design and engineering, and I want badly to keep it. However, I think I probably could get better support from Gigabyte, even though their models just don't have the feature-set I want to see. If I don't get some additional answers tonight on the floppy drive, I will beg NewEgg to take my RMA tomorrow and pay more for a mainboard I want less (either the UD5 or UD7).

EDIT: You have given me one more idea. I hate going through the hassle, but I'm going to look at removing my X-Fi card and adding the Hauppauge and seeing if that works. If it does, I think they need to work on their PCI Express management some.

[rombat]

AAbenson here is my settings:

[LoneWolf]

Tried my one last attempt with the Hauppauge card (removed the X-Fi); still no dice.

I'm going to put it in my SO's system (Intel DG33TL Socket 775 mATX board) just for a quick test. It won't be the same board, nor quite the same OS (32-bit Windows instead of 64) but at least I'll confirm that the card didn't go south in the past week. I have an X-Fi Titanium in hers as well.

And, I'll wait for word from Asrock on the floppy issue, for about twelve hours, but no more. If I hear nothing, I might as well run a board with no floppy controller at all that lets the Hauppauge card work.

[rombat]

LoneWolf been reading your messages about your problems I agree with icedtea and you, could be resource issues with using certain slots on the board, I remember looking at some specs on certain mother boards and reading were if you use certain pci or pci-e slots you could not use one or it disabled something else on the board.

[LoneWolf]

Thanks, rombat, I agree.

I just plugged the Hauppauge card into my SO's system, which has the following cards already:

Geforce 9500GT (PCIe x16)
SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium PCie

This is an Intel DG33TL mATX mainboard, using a far less capable G33 chipset, and a Core 2 E8200 processor with 4GB of RAM.

The system installed the card perfectly on the first try, using Microsoft's drivers. Using the Hauppauge installer also worked. Frustrating, to say the least. At least I'm now assured that the card didn't die somehow.

There is only one thing left I can try before throwing my hands up, and that is trying the Hauppauge card in the Asrock board with only 8GB or 4GB of RAM, and seeing if the card has an issue with addressing space somewhere. At that point, I've exhausted every option I have. I'll be doing that in the next ten minutes, and we'll see what we have. If it doesn't work then, I think I've ruled out every other option than the Asrock board (or 64-bit OS issues, though the Hauppauge drivers support x64 and did in my last Gigabyte board), and I'll have to try something else.

EDIT: Tried the Hauppauge card in the Asrock with only 4GB of RAM. Still no dice. I guess I get to research Z68 mainboards very heavily in the next 2-3 hours. This really isn't what I want --but I don't think I can get the support I need.

[rombat]

LoneWolf I know this might be a dumb question but worth a shot did you install this with a fresh install of win7 and installed the intel inf and intel management drivers, just double checking.

[icedtea]

Although my problems seemed to have magically gone away, I have no idea what went right.
The things that I did; uninstall Virtu, remove ram to one 4GB stick, changed Low MMIO Align and DVMT Memory to 64MB/256MB, disable everything but USB2.0 onboard, install X-Fi and driver, enable everything onboard, go back to 16GB ram, reset Low MMIO Align /DVMT memory back to original settings, re-install Virtu.

I was assuming that eventually something would go wrong, but it just kept working. It could be that my PCI X-Fi is partially dead, after all I've been using it for 6 years now. Might need to get an PCIe X-Fi Titanium and try it out.

[LoneWolf]

LoneWolf I know this might be a dumb question but worth a shot did you install this with a fresh install of win7 and installed the intel inf and intel management drivers, just double checking.

Not a dumb question at all. I did a clean install of Windows 7 Enterprise X64 SP1 (integrated) when installing the board, and used Intel's latest chipset .inf from their website rather than Asrock's. I also used Intel's latest RST storage drivers. I did use Win7's Easy Transfer Wizard to bring back in a number of my files from the old installation, but that wouldn't mess with the hardware setup of the operating system, just the user profile.

I'm going to be bringing my Hauppauge card to work as well to test it with my Nehalem-based Dell system there, which is also running Windows 7 x64. I'm 99% sure my issues are with the Asrock BIOS, but I want every bit of confirmation I can get prior to RMA.

I'm thinking right now, as much as I don't want to put out the extra cash, that the ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z or one of Gigabyte's Z68 boards will probably be my choice. I hate being stuck like this --I want to keep the Extreme 4 Gen 3, but it won't get the job done without some improvement, and Asrock doesn't seem to be interested in helping me.